We fought the rain and the rain won

The weather did not improve overnight.

 

However, we still counted ourselves somewhat lucky, since the torrential downpours that we'd heard pounding on the tent overnight had ceased and we were back to drizzle and tree-rain.  Nadia greeted me in the morning with this: "Mom, there's a huge puddle of water in the corner..."  Turns out they SPILLED A WATER BOTTLE INSIDE THE TENT.  As if we didn't have enough water problems.

 

The chill persisted and a hot breakfast and tea were called for.  Bob made a delicious hash and the smell was sufficiently good to pull reluctant girls from their warm sleeping bags.

 

The "summit" on Bar Island

Outdoor activities didn't seem too promising, so we headed for a touch tank activity being held at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor.  Unfortunately upon arriving we discovered that I'd incorrectly remembered the time and the Natural History Museum, where the touch tank was, was not yet open.

 

Theoretically, a beautiful view of Bar Harbor

So, despite half-hearted protests from Nadia and the fact that Lanie had left her raincoat in the tent (also, did I mention that both Zoe and Lanie left their sneakers outside the tent overnight?), we went into Bar Harbor and set off for Bar Island.  At low tide, the island is connected to Bar Harbor by a sandbar, and you can walk across on the sand.  The kids would have had a ball tide-pooling here if they weren't so cold, but Lanie still managed to find a large number of shells to collect (which I believe are still sitting in my raincoat pocket).  On Bar Island we took a little hike to the summit, and saw what I'm sure would have been a beautiful view across the harbor in less foggy conditions. 

 

Back in Bar Harbor, the rain started in earnest.  We had ducked into a tourist information center and were bleakly thumbing through a newspaper, looking for things to do in the rain, when I came across something exciting.  The local microbrewery, which Bob and I had given longing glances as we passed, had an ad for beer AND SODA tastings.  To me, that said - "Kids welcome!"  So we walked through the pouring rain to the Atlantic Brewing Company, where Bob and I tried four kinds of beer and the kids tried homemade root beer and blueberry soda.

 

By this point the rain had become a deluge, and we realized we were unfortunately a fair way from the car.  By the time we got back we were all drenched.  The kids in their wet sandals were now all far better off than me in my sodden sneakers, which had felt so warm and dry that morning.

 

Rather than enjoying a scenic view, we ate our ragtag lunch in a parking lot, rain pounding on the car all the while.  Luckily it was by now the correct time for the touch tank presentation, and we spent quite a while listening to the ranger and exploring the little museum.  (As with the water bottle inside the tent, Lanie managed to compound our water issues by getting the sleeves of her sweatshirt entirely drenched in the touch tank.)

 

When the rain let up a bit, we set off down the park loop road and stopped at Sand Beach.  The park had been regularly taunting us with pictures and postcards of this beach, drenched in sun, with happy bathing-suited people frolicking about in the water.  The scene was rather different for us -- in fact, we had the whole beautiful beach to ourselves.  We didn't stay too long.

 

At Sand Beach

Since it was not really raining at this point, we set off on a walking trail along the rocks of the coastline, toward Thunder Hole about a half mile away.  It was a LONG half-mile, but the views were gorgeous and Thunder Hole was worth the trip -- though it wasn't actually thundering at that time, Zoe and Nadia loved climbing around on the rocks and splashing through the water.  Lanie at this point (still having no raincoat) was too cold and tired to want to do anything but go back to the car.

 

Yes, as a matter of fact we DID manage
to get Junior Ranger badges!

Bob and I had spent a fair amount of time debating plans during the day.  We kept consulting different weather forecasts and trying to decide whether to hang on or throw in the towel.  Eventually we'd seen that the little Bar Harbor pizza restaurant/movie theater was showing Monsters' University at 5:30, so we decided to tough it out and head there at dinnertime.  By the time we got back, we could just go to bed and hope for better things the next morning.

 

Unfortunately, when we went back to change into drive clothes before the movie, we discovered that some kind of calamity had befallen our tarp/tent setup and the tent was now half-full of water.  Well, you don't have to hit us over the head with a hammer -- this was the last straw and we were out of there.  Nadia and Lanie were very disappointed -- Lanie cried and cried -- while Zoe seemed happy enough to go home to a warm house.  (This is the exact opposite of what I would have predicted, by the way.)

 

At Thunder Hole

Nadia and Zoe were great, though -- they really rallied to help us break camp in record time.  Within an hour of when we'd discovered the wet tent, we were on the road, heading toward home.  (The car was an utter disaster, with wet clothes and towels and tent parts everywhere, but that couldn't be helped.)  I couldn't help but pity the poor saps who were lined up to enter the campground (this being the Friday night before the 4th of July).  And the huge platters of Chinese food that were put before us at the Noodle House in Brewer, Maine did much to raise everyone's spirits.

 

Lest you worry that the kids were too scarred by this experience, they spent the next night at home -- sleeping in the tent in the back yard.

****

From Bob:

We left Acadia with a lot more to see.  Truly.  We spent a lot of time telling the kids things like: "Right out there, where all the fog is, there a beautiful ocean."  Many sentences started: "On a clear day, you would see..."  Sometimes we said: "If it wasn't so wet..."  

As a testament to how wet we were, check out the picture of the girls at Sand Beach.  They stayed on the stairs and didn't even go onto the sand.  Normally, it would have taken the National Guard to keep them from getting knee deep in the water by the time the shutter on the camera closed.  The kids were troopers, but the elements really kept us in check.

I could tell Jen's optimism was flagging as the day dripped on, as was mine.  The kids, to their great credit, were against leaving.  They wanted to stick it out.  So, when the tent collapsed and provided the final straw, there was some release for the adults and much disappointment from the kids.  Lanie cried the whole time we took the tent down.

It didn't take long for everyone to make peace with our fate.  It didn't hurt that our fate included a stop at Noodles and Company.  It might not look like much, but for $50 we got totally filled up with good Chinese food for dinner, and then we got filled up again for lunch the next day.  

We're definitely swinging through Brewer, ME, on our next trip to Acadia.  

And, we're definitely going back to Acadia to see all the stuff we didn't see this time...and maybe pick up a few more popovers in the process.

"The Vacation State"? Ha!

The view of the Atlantic, a short walk from our campsite

Alert readers of last year's cross country trip blog may recall that we had almost freakishly good weather.  Honestly, over the whole five weeks I'm not sure if we ever took our raincoats out of the car.  Almost like someone had made a deal with the devil or something.

Well, apparently the time has come to pay the piper.

As we were driving northward on Wednesday evening, heading toward our campground in Acadia National Park, squinting through the torrential downpour and watching water from the semi-flooded highway fly up to window height in our heavily-laden van, Bob and I were quietly talking about plan B.  What sort of hotels might there be in Bangor, ME?  Soon, though, the downpour slowed to a drizzle and so we pressed onward.

At Blackwoods Campground, everything was dripping.  Especially the large number of trees that hovered over our campsite.  So while it wasn't actually raining, every time a breeze blew splatters of water fell on our heads.  Nevertheless, we managed to set up the tent, eventually get a fire going and even cook some chicken and rice, and later s'mores, over it.  The girls and I walked down the shore path to see the ocean at night, roaring away far below the rocky coastline.

We were awakened multiple times by heavy rains beating on the tent, but by morning we were back to just the tree-drizzle, so we counted ourselves lucky.  (At this point we were also counting ourselves foolish for not having packed more warm clothing.  Will we never learn?)  We warded off the chill with a fire, bacon and eggs, and hot tea, then started planning our day.

Acadia is rather large, like many national parks, but unlike most of them has only one visitor center, up near Bar Harbor by the entrance to Mount Desert Island.  We didn't really want to spend the morning retracing our steps in the car, but we did want to get some park information and a good weather forecast (as well as -- of course -- the Junior Ranger program books).  We'd planned to do some bike-riding on Acadia's famous network of carriage roads, and we saw that we could get to the visitor center on them, so we decided to kill two birds with one stone.  The visitor center looked to be  about 15 miles away, but we did not let that daunt us.  "Your friends the Brookses do that kind of mileage before breakfast," is what we told the children.  Also, we packed a couple of Hershey bars.

Bob's bike seat was soaked
from the car ride.  This was
his elegant solution.

Hauling our bikes up the stairs to the
carriage road

It's good that no one told us in advance how hilly this place is.  Even before we got to the carriage roads, we had to do a couple of mostly uphill miles on the Park Loop Road, rapidly causing the girls to start stripping off raincoats and fleeces.  When we got on to the carriage roads (which we had to access via a set of stairs -- what kind of joke is that for roads that are largely meant for cyclists?), the hill continued.

I should say here that I had by far the best of this deal.  Bob and I have decent road bikes but not mountain bikes, so I was riding on a bike borrowed from our friend Craig Haskell, which was miles better than our old rattletrap that Bob was riding.  In addition, Bob had the "tagalong" (one of those third-wheel things that kind of makes a bike into a tandem) hooked on so Lanie could ride behind.  The weight of this whole contraption was such that if Bob stopped on a hill, there was no getting started again.

Another wonderful thing about the carriage
roads was the excellent signage at every
intersection.

Lanie was the most cheerful of the lot.  She sat there with a smile, occasionally pedaling, sometimes attempting to give Bob an aneurysm by making statements like, "I like pedaling backward better than pedaling forward -- it's much easier!" or "If I drag my foot against the wheel, the wheel tries to take my foot with it!"  Sometimes she would stand up to pedal, her whole body listing to one side then the other, which I know from experience makes the bike teeter terrifyingly.

Luckily, the carriage roads were beautiful -- car-free and uncrowded.  In our ride we passed through gorgeous views of ocean and lakes and ponds and woodlands.  We had a picnic (good old peanut butter again!) on the shores of Eagle Lake, and thanks to our excellent map didn't get lost even once.  (I should add here more praise for this map.  I find that I enjoy a trip like this more if I know exactly where I am, and what the name of that body of water that I'm passing is, and how far it is until the next turning.  Also, Acadia has such interesting and poetic names.  Breakneck Pond.  The Bubbles.  Witch Hole.  Aunt Betty's Pond.  I wish I had a history on where they came from.)

Our lunch spot on Eagle Lake.

Eventually, we did make it to the visitor center.  And all those miles and miles of uphill travel were undone in an instant, as we made a sharp and steep descent to the parking lot.  I didn't ruin the children's fun by reminding them that we would need to go back the same way.

Wishing to avoid a mutiny, Bob and I decided to alter our homeward journey a bit.  While our new route would be a little longer, it had the immense benefit of passing by the Jordan Pond House, a beautiful place where you can sit on the lawn overlooking the pond and gorge yourself on their famous popovers.  With visions of popover sundaes in their heads, the girls were able to keep on moving.

Unfortunately we didn't have a topographical map, so we again didn't realize that our new route would be even more uphill than the last.  Really unrelentingly uphill.  But apart from an incident where my chain came off and got stuck and I had to be rescued by a passing Good Samaritan with pliers (luckily, since Bob was way ahead of me up the path and there was no way he was going to ride that thing back down the hill again -- I could have died back there and he wouldn't have known) we had a pretty successful ride.  And the popover sundaes were worth every minute of it.  Seriously, their homemade ice cream was the best ice cream I've ever had.  Maybe the best thing I've ever had, period.  (Bob thinks that my opinion may have been skewed by low blood sugar but I'm sticking to it.)

Jordan Pond

After sitting outside in the cold mist for a while, and eating ice cream, we were all freezing.  Fortunately, a few minutes on our bikes had solved that problem.  The ride home was a bit tricky because the Park Loop Road is one-way, so we couldn't retrace our steps entirely.  We ended up going back on the regular roads, which were not nearly so pleasant and were STILL very hilly.  Luckily it was only a few miles or we would have had a mutiny on our hands.

Despite the huge popover sundaes, we were all famished by the time we got dinner ready.  Sausages cooked over the fire had never tasted so good.
***
From Bob:

Nadia started a game last summer that goes like this: whenever you see a license plate from a new and unusual place -- let's say Guam -- you say in a funny Nadia voice "Guuuaaaam license plate" and try to tickle someone near you.  There was a lot of tickling and funny Nadia voices around on this trip.  Acadia packs 'em in from all over -- Tennessee, Texas, Maryland, Florida, Colorado, Virginia, we saw them all.  The van next to us in the campground was from California.

So you can feel proud, fellow New Englanders, that we have a gem here in Acadia, and it draws folks from all around.  I'd say roughly 73 percent were there at least partly for the popovers. We saw  the most diversified array of car tags in the parking lot of the Jordan Pond House.

And let me tell you, it was nice leaning the gray beater and tagalong against a tree* and walking past all the Massachusetts and Connecticut cars waiting to find a parking space.  Bike riding has many advantages.  Another one is that you can eat ice cream and chocolate sauce with impunity -- especially if you've ridden a good portion of the park's carriage road system.  I figure we must've covered about half of the 45 miles they have.

Seeing the old US Park Service arrowhead and all the people in ranger hats brought me back to last summer.  So did our camp plates and our fold-up cooking utensils.  One nice surprise was that we did a good job putting things away last year.  Just about everything we needed was waiting of us in the two Tupperware bins that hold our camping gear-- even a tarp and bungee cords, which I forgot we had and bought a whole other set.  A few things we do need to add are: a hatchet for turning camp wood into kindling, some dish soap, and a larger water vessel.  Another box of matches would be good, too.  The people in the van across the road gave us a box that was about 1/8th full because matches was another thing we forgot to put into the camp boxes.


* No one is likely to want to abscond with my bike, and even if someone tried, they would expire on the first hill unless they had my thunder thighs or a five year old who knew how to pedal.  The bike lock we brought was saved for Craig's bike.

A treatise on Italian road signs

8:30am (2:30 am NH time) and ready for the road!

We've made in home successfully, after a 17-hour day involving a vaporetto, two planes, two buses, and a car.  And a LOT of TV.  This time we were on Delta rather than Alitalia, which meant a substantial downgrade in the quality of the food and coffee, but a large improvement in the amount of English-language programming available.  The girls watched approximately a year's worth of TV on the trip home.

Now that we're back, and our traumatic driving experiences are beginning to fade into memory, I want to revisit an earlier portion of our trip.  During our many hours of driving in the Tuscan countryside, closely scanning the surrounding landscape for clues as to where we were or bystanders from whom we could ask directions, we had the opportunity to observe a lot of road signs.  The Italians seem to really like signs (though not signs that tell you useful things like "Rt 55 North").  Here are some of my favorites.

    

This set of five signs, depicting various road hazards, appeared approximately every 50 feet in Tuscany.  If the Italian government could just tell everyone, "Look, anywhere in Tuscany, at any time you're likely to encounter sharp turns, skidding cars, rain, snow, gracefully prancing animals, and falling rocks," they could save themselves a lot of time and trouble.  The "winding roads" one is particularly comical to anyone who's every driven in Tuscany.

Also, fleeing tourists!  No, wait.  We eventually figured
out that this sign was for a school bus stop.

Below is another one I liked.  You'll see that the version on the left says "frana," which presumably gives Italian speakers some clue as to what they're meant to be excited about.  But we saw those like the one on the right multiple times, too -- just a random exclamation point on the side of the road.  "Be vaguely alarmed!  About some unspecified danger!"

Also, what's that up and down arrow
thing on the bottom supposed to mean?
Speed limit is 30, more or less?

These are the girls' "alarmed" faces.

This one I never figured out.  We saw it a lot.  Sometimes there was one lump, sometimes two.

And I've saved the best for last.  We came across this one in Florence.  I have absolutely no idea what it's supposed to represent, but I'll offer an award for the best guess.  (Without the strange blue man and the hearts, it would be a standard "do not enter" sign in Italy.)  Anyone?

And lest you should think that cars have all the fun, here's the type of warning sign that you'll see in car-free Venice.  There was actually a fair-sized series of signs where a winged lion was stopping tourists from doing something stupid.  At least it's not just the Americans that they think are stupid.  That's not even our flag!  It's the BRITISH people who are stupid.

P.S.  And when we got home, this is who was waiting for us at our neighbor's house.  4 out of our 6  new additions have been named in honor of our Italy trip: Siena, Lucolena (for the village nearest our villa), Joya (for the villa dog), and Pulcina ("chick" in Italian).

One last visit to St. Mark's Square

Courtyard of the Doge's Palace

Lunch in the square

Our final day of Venice and of Italy.  We'd thought of getting an early start to beat the crowds, but we awoke to pouring rain -- so we stayed in and did some family reading instead.  Luckily the rain stopped around 10 am, and since it was the only substantial rain of the whole trip, we weren't complaining.

Today's agenda was to return to Piazza San Marco (a book we listened to with the girls that was set in Venice, The Thief Lord, says that everyone in Venice visits St. Mark's Square at least once a day) and see some of the sights.  Foremost on the list was the Doge's Palace.  (This, along with some of the other landmarks on the square, is referenced in ANOTHER book set in Venice, The Magic Treehouse: Carnival at Candlelight.  Lanie is obsessed with The Magic Treehouse so this made things considerably more interesting for her.) 

As with the Colosseum in Rome, we were able to beat the ticket line by buying our combination ticket at the rather less popular Correr Museum.  And the museum was pretty cool!  We all loved the exhibit of crazy carnivale dresses, and I was impressed by the exhibit that had every coin ever minted in Venice, starting in the year 820.

While waiting in the LONG line for St. Mark's Basilica (we couldn't avoid that one) we got to watch the hour strike twelve, which is marked by two statues repeatedly striking a bell.  The same clock tower also contains the world's first "digital" clock, which flips over every five minutes.  (See a photo plus Lanie's rendition here.)  

The Doge's Palace was a great stop and an amazing study in contrasts.  First we walked through the very sumptuous and ornate state rooms, with their impressive art and architecture.  Then we turned into a stone passageway and were suddenly plunged across the "Bridge of Sighs" and into the grimmness of the prisons.  We were able to explore the many levels of prisons and see the graffiti that had been left there by generations of prisoners.  (I think the kids liked the prison better than the palace.)

Optical illusion floor in the Doge's Palace

***

From Bob:

            Venice is a walking around theme park interspersed with a boat ride or two.   Each street, bridge and side alley calls out to be explored.   Even the smallest passages have the potential to lead somewhere interesting.  On the other hand, some streets seem like major walkways, but then they just wind up in a dead end.  

            I suppose it’s easy to get lost, but we’re sticking to pretty well-traveled territory.  Our apartment is a short walk from the Rialto Bridge, which is right in the center of the town.   To get back and forth from there to Piazza San Marco, we follow signs painted on the sides of buildings.  Sometimes the arrows on the signs point two different ways.  You can get to Saint Mark’s this way or that way.  Take your pick.  Don’t bother with street names – our apartment is on the Corte della Ca’ Amadi, but I doubt anyone would know where that is.  Just follow the arrows on the wall back that say “per Rialto.”  They’ll lead us home. 

 

View from the palace

           Although there was a fair amount of foot traffic as we searched for a restaurant tonight, things have calmed down from our first night, which was a Saturday.  There were lots of people singing in the streets that night.  And drinking.       

            Tonight we followed some interesting side streets and found the first of the three things we were looking for: a place for cicchetti, which are Italian bar snacks.  Most are fried things , like peppers and zucchini.  There were also some meatballs and ricetta balls, but can’t honestly say I’m wholly sure exactly what I ordered. It all tasted good eaten off a barrel in the street outside the bar, though.

            We were not quite as successful with quest number two.  For our dinner restaurant we kind of succumbed to a high pressure waiter who popped into the street while we were reading the menu.  What we really should have done was peek inside to see if anyone was already in there.  They weren’t .

Last look at Venice from the Bridge of Sighs

            To be fair, the food wasn’t bad.  It was just a little uncomfortable being the only ones in the restaurant.  We had tried to avoid this. We waited until 7 pm before shopping around for a place to eat – we weren’t going to be those pitiful tourists who showed up for dinner at 5:30. Eventually people trickled in and the place was half filled by the time we left.   It wasn’t the enchanting Italian dining experience that we had hoped for, but I enjoyed my sole, and at the next table was a German (or maybe British) fellow who looked just like Larry Bird.  That was pretty cool.  German Larry Bird was having a fine time, too.   GLB’s happiness was contagious.  I was in a pretty good mood when we left.

            So then we kicked about for our third goal of the night, a gelato bar.  If you’re in Italy, you’re never too far from one of those.   From there, it was just a matter of following the “per Rialto” signs until we saw the pink church.  That’s all you need to know about navigating in Venice.  Also, pick a different restaurant then the one we picked.   Unless German Larry Bird tells you differently.

St. Mark's Basilica

Cicchetti